Bower's Award Presentation
The Chi Chapter of Gamma Iota Sigma truly has made a name for itself. After being named Superior chapter at last year’s conference, the Chi Chapter was selected to present for the Bower’s Award this year. To be named the top chapter throughout all of Gamma Iota Sigma, Mike Jennings and I presented on Thursday of the conference to showcase how the Chi Chapter ran last year. Showcasing our chapter of GIS is actually an easy feat because our members are outstanding. We organized our presentation with three main points- strategic plan, events, and contributions to grand chapter.
Beginning with our strategic plan, Mike recognized the fact that our chapter is just one part of the whole purpose of grand chapter. The impacts we make as the Chi Chapter ripple out to Drake University, the Des Moines community, the insurance industry, and also to grand chapter. With that in mind, we developed our five core competencies based on grand chapter’s vision. These five values are brotherhood, knowledge, leadership, service, and professionalism. This framework helps our chapter develop members before they reach the work world and we measure this success through metrics that the Executive Council collects.
Next, I spoke about the unique events we held last year that directly followed our five core competencies. For brotherhood, I spoke about how our recruitment week is different from most campuses, the initial annual Gamma formal, our semiannual Gammies (they enjoyed the pun), and our semiannual potluck. For knowledge, I mentioned our tutoring program, our growing exam resources library, and the goodie bags we gave to members going into actuarial exams. Next was leadership, and the judges were impressed by our inaugural annual leadership conference. Then, I moved on to community service, recognizing that the insurance industry is all about serving the community and how the Chi Chapter believes that it is good to help the community even while we are still in school. For this value our Week of Service and Super Service Saturday stats showed the judges how much we value bettering our community. Finally, for professionalism events I spoke about the dozen companies we brought in and the technical workshops we held to prepare our members for internships/full-time offers. To show the judges that we want to better people in all of our five values, I brought up our ambassador program. This new program allows us to inform others about actuarial science and insurance industry.
Finally, Mike noted that the Chi Chapter continued to contribute to grand chapter throughout the year. We advised new chapters, spoke at chapter management sessions, helped with the alumni update database, and built up the Gamma brand through our events and public relations.
After the presentation, Mike and I were so pumped about our chapter. We held outstanding events, developed great members, and worked to create a sustainable organization last year. Afterward, I talked to some of the judges, and they gushed about how genuine and passionate we seemed about our chapter. They were excited about the ambassador program because it helps foster interest in the insurance field. Overall, the Chi Chapter of Gamma Iota Sigma made a great showing at the conference, and we walked away with the big title because our organization always strives to be better. I have no doubt that we will continue to grow even stronger as a chapter and see great professional and social development with our members as well. The future is bright.
- Kate McCoy (Director of Social)
